Help support the creation of the first space based telescope dedicated to the observation of one star system: Centauri our closest celestial neighbor. Project Blue’s ultimate goal is to take the first visible light image of an Earth like planet outside of our own Solar System. The Kickstarter funding goal is 1 million, but I have been posting this image with the goal of 4 million becuase that pays for everything except getting the telescope launched.

The mission patch was designed by our sister site chopshopstore.com, well known for their Robotic Spacecraft Series of prints. They are also responsible for the official mission patch for The Planetary Society’s LightSail. As of now only the patch design is released to the campaign, but there are also plans for a more detailed limited edition screenprint for the campaign to be unveiled around November 28.

The closest star to our own is apparently going to be the center of a major announcement at the end of the month. Sorry to tell them, but the cat (if there is a cat) is already out of said bag. And — this is coming on the heels of the Breakthrough Initiatives announcement of Starshot, a nano-mission to the nearest star system within a generation. A group backed by Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan’s widow Ann Druyan and Mark Zuckerberg.

On a related note, Chop Shop (our more commercial entity) just released their first design for Icarus Interstellar Build a Starship which happens to feature the Centauri System (that is Proxima upper right). Centauri is a triple star system with Beta Centauri in orbit around Alpha Centauri. Despite the graphic’s presentation… Proxima Centauri’s orbit (if there is one) is so long that they are not even sure if it actually orbits the two or if it is just locked into position trailing the two.

Mike Mongo (of OBEY fame) is now with Icarus Interstellar whose goal is the first interstellar mission before the year 2100. Please consider crowd-funding Humannaires!, his astronaut instruction manual for pre-teens. It is time for humanity to leave the nest and they just might be the generation to do it!

Its not that we haven’t been trying, but for all our effort… the best we have found lurking among the stars comparable to our home is a planet at about 5x Earth sizes. When you consider the advances and methods of detection, one can almost assume that Earth-like extra planet discoveries will be made from ground-based observations very soon. With this week’s successful Kepler launch, the assumption may be that (if they are out there) we might be talking about finding many Earth-like planets beyond our Solar System fairly soon. Hopefully, the job of finding extra-solar planets is about to get really interesting.

Click the image for a hi-res to see the banner on the side (or here). I like how home-made it seems, “Search for Earth Sized Planets”. Makes it almost seem like a boy-scouts rocket project.

Simple yet informative online model of the solar system. I knew Jupiter had over 60 moons, but you don’t really visualize that until you see a model in action (seen above). The thing that really becomes clear is how many minor moons orbit WELL beyond the orbits of the major moons of the outer planets. It also provides models of some of the more well-known extrasolar planetary systems to the extent of bodies that we are currently aware of.